Max Collins - The last quarry

“ How fresh?”

Now he sounded defensive, and did a Rodney Dangerfield tug of his jogging-suit collar. “A month, six weeks at the outside.”

I shook my head. “I have to watch her a while. Patterns change. Shift.” I sat forward. “Mr. Green, the elimination side is only part of the process-it starts with surveillance. Otherwise the cops find me. And if they find me, they find you.”

In the old days, the guy hiring me wouldn’t have been sitting across from me; it would have been the Broker or someone like him.

Jonah Green let out a sigh worthy of a Christian martyr. “Fine.” His eyebrows rose and he shook a finger. “But two months, and she’s a problem, Mr. Quarry.”

“I heard that the first time.”

He tasted the inside of his mouth and didn’t seem to like it much. “There’s, uh…one other thing. It’s a part of why your fee is so generous.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“It’s…well, it’s got to be an accident.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “Say again?”

He gestured with both hands, obviously finding it distasteful to have to discuss this. “You know…slip and fall in the tub, brakes go out, hell, I don’t know… that’s your department!”

I looked at him for a while.

He was getting uneasy by the time I said, “I don’t usually do ‘accidents.’z”

Irritably, he said, “For a quarter mil, make an exception-you mind if I smoke?”

“Take it outside.”

Dusk had settled on us as we stood on the deck, looking out on Sylvan Lake’s still frozen expanse; you couldn’t see Harry and Louis’s hole at all from here.

The millionaire leaned on the deck rail, gazing out at the stark, serene landscape, his plumes of breath alternating with exhales of tobacco smoke. I was standing there, arms folded, looking at my prospective employer, wondering if I should take the job or go out there and drop another one in that hole.

“Beautiful,” Green said, shaking his head admiringly. “Beautiful goddamn country, up here. I can see why you like it.”

“I’ll be moving on soon,” I said. “You could probably buy this cottage from the guy who owns the lodge.”

Green flicked his gaze my way.

I continued: “Of course, if you do move in, for a summer home? Every time you look out at this lovely lake, you’ll be looking at those numbnuts who grabbed your kid.”

He wasn’t studying the lake, anymore; his eyes were on me. “Why moving on?”

“You know where I live, Mr. Green.” I shrugged and smiled. “Even if I do do this job, I’m out of here.”

Eyes narrowed to slits, Green said, “You don’t need to do that, Mr. Quarry. I swear to you I was discreet about finding you. I used a number of people, and no single investigator was-”

“Sure. Fine.”

Green sighed. “ Will you do the job?”

I nodded.

Relief flooded his features. “How do I make my payment?”

“I’ll give you the offshore banking info. When $125 K hits the account, I go to work. When I deliver, put the rest in.”

Green frowned. “You trust me to do that?”

“Sure.” I grinned at him. “I’m kinda my own collection agency.”

He didn’t allow himself to be frightened by that; instead he again stared out at the hauntingly beautiful lake.

For the first time, I heard a genuine melancholy in the mogul’s voice. “She’s…she’s already dead.”

I nodded. “It just hasn’t made the obits yet… Coffee?”

The Homewood Library seemed modern to me, but only because of my age-it dated to the ’70s and you walked into a big high-ceilinged area with wide steps leading up to a surrounding second floor that was like a landing that got out of hand.

The place was all cheerful oranges and greens and yellows, dotted with oppressively cheerful posters encouraging reading and featuring lots of Asian and black faces, though everybody I saw in there was white. What had once been open and spacious was now a little cluttered, with an area obviously intended for seating given over to portable bookcases of NEW RELEASES and AUDIOS, and various computer stations.

It didn’t remind me much of the austere churchlike libraries of my youth-hardwood floors and institutional green walls and endless shelves of anonymous dustjacket-less books overseen by cold-eyed old-maid librarians with their hair in gray buns and their bodies in gray dresses that a nun would’ve considered needlessly unflattering.

And Janet Wright didn’t remind me of those old-maid librarians, either, though her white blouse and black skirt were a little stark, at that. Her dark blonde hair was pinned up (though not in a bun), attractive stray curls of it struggling free to give her heart-shaped face unbidden decorative touches. Her reading glasses were wireframe and merely serviceable, like the touches of lipstick and eyeliner that appeared to be her only makeup. She seemed to have a nice shape, too, though her wardrobe played it down.

But there was no getting away from that nice, creamy complexion and eyes so brown they almost looked black from a distance, and she had a very nice smile that she flashed generously at the grade-school kids-third-graders? — who were sitting on the floor in the Children’s Section staring up adoringly at her, lost in the story she was reading…a book called The Glass Doorknob, something or other about a sock monkey.

I was impressed-not one of these kids was fidgeting or squirming or looking to need their Ritalin dosage, even if their laughter did seem unnecessarily shrill. Of course, eight kids who were spending their Friday after-school time at the library probably weren’t the type to be fussy; plus, the six girls probably wanted to be Janet Wright when they grew up, and the two boys probably wanted to marry her when they did (although right now they had no idea why).

As she sat in the chair, her audience gathered around like little Indians, it was obvious she related well to the tykes, stopping to ask them questions, involving them, really looking at them and even listening to their answers.

Already I understood what Jonah Green had meant about this woman not deserving what I was here to do to her. Nobody looking at her would have guessed a contract kill would be her fate. On the other hand, nobody looking at me would have guessed I was stalking my prey-in jeans, running shoes, brown sweater, lighter brown shirt-with-collar, I might have been a teacher or writer, the kind of rumpled jerk who browses endlessly at Borders and never buys a goddamn thing, then complains that book sales are down because the world has gone illiterate.

Right now I was fucking around in the War Section, flipping through books on Vietnam written by idiots who hadn’t been there. And, by the way, if you ever have a question about where any specific subjects can be found in the stacks of the Homewood Library, from gardening to the Holocaust, I’m your guy.

She’d been easy enough to spot-from the handful of pictures Green had given me, plus when I came in she was sitting at the HELP DESK with her name on a nameplate in front of her. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple to make her.

She also worked the front desk, during lunch hour, checking out books, pleasant, friendly, helpful to various library patrons, clearly good at what she did and happy doing it.

I kept browsing, “reading” magazines and books while I kept up my surveillance, lately keeping track of Janet Wright interacting with these laughing children. It was the kind of thing that would give you a warm feeling if you weren’t here to kill her.

After the kids scampered off to their suppers, Janet returned to the help desk where she was doing paperwork when a narrow-faced, conventionally handsome guy approached her, a thirty-something would-be Yuppie with a tan, perfect hair, a pale yellow shirt with an alligator on it and jeans that were too new-looking.